I have just spent some time looking at the Greens’ policies on your website. First of all, congratulations on your party’s stand on GMOs. I sincerely hope we can hold back the tide of these organisms before it’s too late. As it is, GMOs have already stealthily invaded many processed foods, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to avoid them. At the very least, consumers deserve to have foods containing GMOs clearly labelled.

What very much surprises me about your party’s policies however, is that though you are concerned about human rights, healthy drinking water and protecting habitats and the environment, nowhere do you mention the fact that much of Australia’s water supply is being fluoridated with highly toxic, unrefined, silicofluoride industrial waste, which is contaminated with other deadly toxins such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and even uranium in some cases – depending on which industry this industrial waste has been sourced from. In Queensland most of this fluoride is purchased from China – we are paying them to dispose of their industrial waste in our water supplies. (And with China’s well documented history of toxic exports, I find it quite alarming that they have virtually been given open access to our life-giving water supplies).

At the very least, this goes completely against our human right not to be medicated against our will, without our informed consent – and without consideration of the state of our health (at least 1% of the population is highly sensitive to fluoride), nor the dose we will get (it depends on how much we drink – and outdoor workers in the tropics who drink significant amounts of water will certainly be getting unsafe dosages). We only excrete about 50% of the fluoride we consume (if our kidneys are healthy) – the rest accumulates in our bodily tissues where, over time, it can cause serious harm to our health. And the ‘precautionary principle’ has been completely ignored!

Only a very small percentage of fluoridated water is actually consumed. Something like 99% of it is used in showers, washing machines, dishwashers etc and ends up down the drain, where it eventually ends up wreaking havoc in the environment. It would be far more cost effective, ‘green’ – and ethical – to supply those who want to take fluoride with free tablets.

It doesn’t take much time when looking into water fluoridation to discover that this outdated practice is neither safe, nor effective at preventing tooth decay. Former US EPA scientist, Dr Robert Carton, called it “… the greatest case of scientific fraud of this (20th) century, if not of all time.” We have been sold a big lie from the beginning. This is made very clear in investigative journalist Christopher Bryson’s meticulously researched book, The Fluoride Deception (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2004). It is further spelled out in The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There by Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, and H.S. Micklem, DPhil (Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont, 2010).

Toxicologist and retired Chemistry Professor, Dr Paul Connett, also runs the Fluoride Action Network website: www.fluoridealert.org where you can quickly learn the facts about this unethical practice. Fluoridation is now quickly crumbling in its birthplace, the USA, and in Canada – as more people are becoming aware of these facts. It is well past time Australia caught up.

If the Greens Party is truly serious about human rights, healthy drinking water and protecting habitats and the environment, you should be seriously investigating water fluoridation – and not merely by looking at what Government and Dental Association websites say. As well as the resources I have suggested above, here are some reputable reference sources that verify my claims about fluoridation: